Defeating the implicit curriculum that discourages family medicine

This past February I retired as Regional Dean after 12.5 years.  Our regional campus at the time had 25 3rd & 4th year students.  Over the years we increased to 35 per year.  Our campus has had a family medicine residency for over 40 years now.  Yet, when I started, we did not have many students enter family medicine. Prior to becoming a regional dean, I worked at large academic medical campuses.  Any student interested in family medicine residency runs into persistent insults and harassment.  When you talk to these students, they point fingers at residents in almost every speciality.  Many attending physicians also berate students and try to convince them to do their specialty, while insulting family medicine. Our state, and we are not unique, needs more family physicians.  We know that family physicians improve the health of their communities.  We need great medical students to serve our rural area, our urban areas, and even suburbia. So early in my tenure at the regional campus I asked students about family medicine.  At that time, the students went somewhat randomly to work with various family physicians in the area.  These physicians varied greatly.  Some students told me that some of these preceptors discourage them from considering family medicine. At the same time, with a large family medicine department and 36 residents, the students knew the residents but did not know the faculty.  While we did not have a negative implicit curriculum for family medi...
Source: DB's Medical Rants - Category: Internal Medicine Authors: Tags: Medical Rants Source Type: blogs